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Putting Miracles in Their Place

A few days after I arrived in India for the first time I was squatting
over a hole-in-the-ground toilet early in the morning, when some words popped
into my head:

… NO WATER …

The words were utterly unconnected with any ongoing thoughts, and they struck
me as having been somehow intruded into the usual flow, as if they were
surrounded by white space. Certainly I had no use for them, so after noticing
the strangeness of this phenomenon, my mind moved on to other issues. I did the
business I was there for, and turned on the tap so I could clean myself in the traditional
Indian fashion. Oh no! So that’s what it meant: NO WATER!

Not your regular kind of miracle? Too banal to deserve consideration? Or
perhaps you feel it doesn’t count because it was entirely private and held no
significance except to me alone? Actually, that’s exactly what makes it worth
paying attention to, but in order to make this case I’ll need to draw several
disparate threads together…

What makes a
miracle?

People often hold peculiar notions about what constitutes a miracle.

Which is more miraculous: that “god” created the world in six days; or
that there was a big bang which gave rise to all the matter and energy we see,
followed by an episode of cosmic inflation in which the universe expanded to1078 times its
size in 10−32
seconds?

Which is more miraculous: that “god” created humans out of clay; or that
we are all made entirely from the dust of long-dead stars (except for the
hydrogen atoms, which came from the big bang)?

Which is more miraculous: that a “messiah” or “prophet” came just once
to just one planet; or that there are at least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
planets in the universe?

Which is more miraculous: that a “guru” survives without, apparently,
needing to eat or drink; or that there is a structured and surprisingly comprehensible
system of physical laws, including the second law of thermodynamics which
obliges every living being to imbibe sustenance.

In truth, external reality is so remarkable that its very existence
surely qualifies as a miracle. But the kind of miracle I’m concerned with here
is a rather more subtle, internal phenomenon.

So Who Are You
Really?

This morning, when you woke up, you found yourself in possession of a
more-or-less coherent body of memory purporting to be “your” past, and insofar
as you troubled to check, it was also more-or-less consistent with the
narratives reported by the people whom you found yourself surrounded by.

But there is another interpretation, which fits the available facts
equally well. Perhaps you were created, ab
initio, at the moment when you experienced waking up, complete with
appropriate memories, and those around you were either created likewise, with
consistentmemories, or are complicit in
misleading you. You might find this alternative scenario implausible, but can
you honestly exclude such a possibility? How can you be sure?

Indeed, how can you rely upon the veracity of these past few hours –
perhaps you were created just an instant ago, complete with a memory of having
read the beginning of this sentence, and the preceding paragraphs, and
everything that occurred previously in “your life”.

And perhaps you were re-created just an instant later, with subtly
differing memories, and again an instant later, and again, and again… What
proofs can you offer to refute this account of your subjective experience?

Why Does Stuff
Happen?

In fact, close observation suggests that we experience an intermittent
stream of discrete moments, each projected from an unseen source (as discussed
in another
post). Of course, we mostly don’t experience reality in this way because
our minds process and repackage our experiences, using a number of unwarranted
fundamental assumptions about the nature of consciousness. That these
assumptions are held to be axiomatic by all “right-thinking” scientists and
philosophers, as well as by ordinary people, speaks only to their plausibility,
and not to their legitimacy.

Re-examining these entrenched axioms is not an
intellectual challenge, but an experiential one, to be experimented with as
part of a meditative approach to life. Instead of offering any arguments, therefore,
I’ll simply list some of them:

I am a
free-standing conscious entity, separate from and independent of other
people. All other conscious entities which may exist can always be readily
distinguished from myself.

I enjoy
real freedom, with some limitations, to choose the content of my
consciousness, and also to influence the world around me.

The
principle of cause and effect applies across all space and time, without
relaxation, except for some allowance made to accommodate the statistical
nature of quantum mechanics.

The only
way to establish whether something is real is through intersubjective agreement
with other people.

The True
Purpose of Miracles

Miracles stand out because in the general course of day-to-day life
everything which we encounter is fully consistent with scientific laws,
including cause and effect. Science is essentially a structured method to
establish intersubjective agreement: if I say, “This is a snake”, and you say,
“No it’s a rope”, then we have a problem. If I describe an object (thing,
event, phenomenon) in a particular way and you can recognize my description as
an accurate explanation of that object, then we can agree on what to do about
it.

But occasionally I have an experience which doesn’t fit into the
scientific framework of intersubjectivity. Scientific laws are the everyday
clothes that reality wears, but sometimes it likes to dress up. The appearance
of consistency is a reassuring beat underlying our daily experience, but the
cosmic drummer is free to create interesting variations since each and every
stroke is independently produced. But such variations pose no difficulty for the
rational scientific worldview so long as they remain intrasubjective: your miracle is only revealed as such to you
alone, and mine to me.

This is precisely the problem with the so-called miracles claimed by religious
organizations and other charlatans: whenever a “miracle” is perceived by more
than one person, it requires the suspension of our normal intersubjective
agreement. Any miracle which breaks science has obviously been designed for the
purpose of manipulating vulnerable people. Not only is it bizarre to assume
that reality is fashioned as a homogenous whole - except for this bit, but such
“miracles” draw the attention outwards, instead of inwards like the true
miracles.

And there are more subtle misunderstandings, even among those who realize that miracles are always an individual experience. For example, the mother of Ram
Dass was ill, and Neem Karoli Baba accurately described her illness, so Ram
Dass interpreted this to mean that “the guru knows everything.” This is surely
an unjustified exaggeration: it was only necessary for the guru to say a few
appropriate words on a specific occasion, perhaps not even appreciating their
significance, for Ram Dass to experience a miracle.

But whatever you make of the miracles granted to you, at least don’t
ignore them. The world displays a general coherence which is wonderfully useful
for organizing our daily lives, but occasionally, when we need it most, each of
us is given a hint that there is more beneath the surface. Miracles are
splendidly effective at catching your attention and reminding you that you aren’t
really who you think you are: that’s what they’re there for. So, the next time
you have an extraordinary experience - it might be a marvellous serendipity or
a smidgen of telepathy - make use of the opportunity to investigate the nature
of consciousness: is it really local, personal, and limited?